Flexible metal/semiconductor/metal type photodetectors based on manganese doped ZnO nanorods

High-performance flexible photodetectors are one of the most interesting research areas due to their great possibilities for a variety of applications such as portable and wearable optoelectronics. This study verifies the performance of flexible metal/semiconductor/metal-type photodetector based on pristine and manganese doped ZnO nanorods (ZnO-NRs) prepared in two different concentrations of zinc precursors and manganese dopant at low temperatures. The photodetectors having ZnO-NRs with high aspect ratios were investigated by various material characterization techniques such as electron paramagnetic resonance and photoluminescence spectroscopy to confirm the relationship between defect concentrations and photodetector performance parameters. It has been calculated that the detectivity (D*) and responsivity (R) of the ZnO nanorod-based photodetectors increased 20 and 18 folds, respectively by increasing the concentration of zinc precursor. Besides the D* and R values of the photodetectors, prepared by the 16.5 mM zinc precursor, increased 18 and 4.5-fold, respectively, after manganese doping. We confirmed that even a very low concentration of zinc precursor could produce a photodetector with high performance in photo-response characteristics, flexibility, and stability against 10,000 cycles of convex/concave bending.